Are all the elect raptured before the Tribulation, according to Calvinists?

Question

From this link:

It seems inconsistent for God to promise believers that they will not suffer wrath and then leave them on the earth to suffer through the wrath of the tribulation.

If the Bible is interpreted literally and consistently, the pre-tribulational position is the most biblically-based interpretation.

And this link:

At that moment, the world will have no born-again believers anywhere.

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Does it mean there will be no more of God's elect?

I mean something like this :
Before the creation, God has 100 elects, humans who will be in heaven.
Not one of the 100 elects will taste the tribulation.

Matthew 24:31
And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other

80 elects already died before the Rapture. The rest, 20 elects are raptured.
No more the elect, no more believer to the rest of the future after the Rapture, before the Millennial Kingdom.

Answer 1

Most Reformed/Calvinist churches are Amillennial.¹ For Amillennials the "millennium" is a symbol for the entire church age, and there is no single time which we could call the "Great Tribulation". Instead there will be times of tribulation throughout this age. The second coming of Jesus is not seen as a complex multi-part event like the pre- and mid-tribulationists do, but just a single time of Jesus' return, the resurrection of the dead, and judgement.

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¹ The exceptions would generally be Reformed Baptists, who are often Premillennial, but could also be postmillennial. Amongst the Reformed Baptists there's probably lots of diversity about the Tribulation; it is not a clear dividing doctrine unlike credobaptism or Reformed Theology's doctrine of salvation.

Answer 2

Many Calvinists reject dispensational premillennialism, so for them your question doesn’t even make sense.

Eschatology and soteriology can often develop independently of one another, so you’re not going to find a good answer to your question. Your best bet is to study the various eschatological views often held by Calvinists, which include Dispensational Premillenialism, Postmillenialism, and Amillenialism.

Answer 3

In response to the two links you made reference to:

Got Questions is not a Calvinistic Protestant denomination. The views expressed in that article about the series of ‘Left Behind’ novels and films is not Calvinistic. Got Questions supports a pre-tribulational rapture position and interprets the events in Revelation literally. However, Got Questions admits that the pre-tribulation view has flaws:

One perceived weakness of pretribulationism is its relatively recent development as a church doctrine, not having been formulated in detail until the early 1800s. Another weakness is that pretribulationism splits the return of Jesus Christ into two “phases”—the Rapture and the Second Coming—whereas the Bible does not clearly delineate any such phases. Source: https://www.gotquestions.org/pretribulationism.html

Are all the elect raptured before the Tribulation, according to Calvinists? Herein lies the danger of sticking labels onto Christians, especially when it comes to “Calvinists”. The views expressed by Got Questions are not necessarily the views held by most Christians who identify with Calvinism. The views expressed by Got Questions support a pre-tribulation rapture and a literal thousand year reign of Christ on earth. This is not based on “Calvinism”.

Calvin said the elect are kept, in faith, by the almighty power of God. The doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints, or the Security of Believers, shows how the elect who are set apart by the Spirit and persevere to the end – those who are given true, living faith in Christ – are secure and safe in Him. They have been sealed with the Holy Spirit and have been given the guarantee of their salvation. Calvin had nothing to say about the elect being raptured prior to the Tribulation. Here are some Bible verses used in the book “The Five Points of Calvinism Defined, Defended, Documented –by David N. Steele and Curtis C. Thomas, pp 56-60 (published 1963):

I do not pray that thou should take them out of the world, but that thou should keep them from the evil one (John 17:15).

Since therefore we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God (Romans 5:8-10).

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For thy sake we are being killed all day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered” (Romans 8:35-39).

Were those first Christian saints, those of the elect, spared from trials and tribulations? No, they were not. Since the Church Age began (with the ascension of Christ Jesus to heaven) till Christ returns, with the angels, God’s people will continue to be persecuted and experience hardships. The promise is that the saints will be preserved, that they will not have to face the judgment of God. There is no mention of them being raptured during the Tribulation.

Associated with the relatively new teaching of the Rapture is ‘Dispensationalism’ - a theological system that emphasizes the literal interpretation of Bible prophecy, recognizes a distinction between Israel and the Church, and organizes the Bible into different dispensations or administrations. Dispensational theology was not formalized until John Nelson Darby began teaching it in the mid-1800s. Dispensational theology first became popular in the days of Cyrus Scofield with the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in the early 1900s.

As others have pointed out in their answers to your question, most Reformed Protestant churches do not support a pre-millennial rapture of the saints prior to the Great Tribulation and the return of Christ Jesus. Neither do they support the idea of Christ returning to earth to rule from Jerusalem for 100,000 years with a revived priesthood, temple and animal sacrifices. Such ideas turned up some 300 years after John Calvin’s death and can not be attributed to him.

Answer 4

The Pretribulation Rapture removes all believers in Christ when it happens--but not all of the Elect. In the same way that we who are now in Christ were chosen "before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4), yet we were not actually saved until that particular point in time "when," as Paul wrote, "God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:15-16). The Rapture removes all of the "saved" from the Earth, but not all of the "elect." There will be many elect ones saved during the Tribulation--in their case, even though they were fully elect at the time of the Rapture, they were still in unbelief, and it was the Lord's good pleasure to draw them to Himself after the Rapture. "When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world'" (Matt. 25:31-34). These believers will constitute the first generation of mortals who will begin populating the Messiah's Millennial Kingdom (Rev. 20:4-6).